


Knowing the Heart of a Three Leaf

by Truth



Category: Clover
Genre: Violence, Yuletide, canon character death, challenge:Yuletide 2006, recipient:lydiasky, unbalanced relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-26
Updated: 2010-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-12 21:41:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truth/pseuds/Truth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A death can bring insight and passion can bring sorrow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knowing the Heart of a Three Leaf

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lydiasky](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=lydiasky).



  


## Knowing the Heart of a Three Leaf

  
Fandom: [Clover](http://yuletidetreasure.org/get_fandom_quicksearch.cgi?Fandom=Clover)

  
Written for: lydiasky in the Yuletide 2006 Challenge

by [Truth](http://yuletidetreasure.org/cgi-bin/contact.cgi?filename=32/knowingthe)  


" _If you find a four-leaf clover,  
You'll have found happiness._

But it will  
Never be found,  
Since happiness rests inside  
That secret cage.  
No one can own  
The four-leaf clover.

But then what of  
The Three-leaf clover?"

The high walls of the cage stretched upward, decorative steel frame curving to make a lovely dome far above as if to deny that its resemblance to an airy prison was anything more than a trick of the eye. Delicate trees and leafy, flowered plants stretched upward, an incongruous fantasy forest to conceal the dark bars that enclosed the huge, empty room.

All of it an elaborate display of created beauty, vibrant and flourishing in the regularly spaced beams of sunlight as if to shame the occupant into accepting her lovely surroundings as other than the barren, sterile surroundings of a prison.

Tiny metal birds perched in the trees and darted to and fro, occasionally lighting on the small, fine-boned fingers of their mistress as she sat in the high branches, gently kicking her feet.

Freedom was very much on Suu's mind as she swung her bare feet, the long folds of her skirt hanging far beneath her and helping to create the picture of an improbable fairy directly out of a child's storybook. The fragile arch of metal wings from her back completed the image, her pensive frown looking oddly out of place on an image that might have come from a particularly fanciful daydream.

Her presence here, her very existence, was an oasis of calm - of stasis. Nothing changed, no one came, no one went. This was her place, within the cage, unchanging and alone.

The huge room was strangely silent, even the tiny birds not causing more than a faint whirr in the air as they flitted through the air. Normally the air was full of song or of soft whispers as Suu spoke to her mechanical companions. Today Suu wasn't singing or speaking, however, attention focused somewhere else as she _listened_ , her attention skipping from one thing to the next.

It would have surprised her constant watchers, perhaps, to discover that Suu thought of the world outside of her lovely cage as the prison - a dark and unhappy place where people moved through a constant fog of uncertainty and discontent. Suu knew what war was and had heard the poisoned hiss of hate and misery in the words that found their way to her ears.

Today, however, perched in the branches and bathed in the light of the afternoon sun, she was listening to something new. For all of her apparent youth, Suu knew too much, _felt_ too much, knew the feeling of life slipping through her fingers as elusive as the song that she surrounded herself with whenever given the chance. Here and there, however, she still found things that surprised her and, more often, saddened her.

She listened to the others today, knowing that C had been taken for a series of tests while B and A had been left alone together. Something in the air had been singing with tension since the morning and Suu had been unable to concentrate because of it. She had finally given in and was shamelessly eavesdropping... on a great deal of silence.

Still the tension grew and she waited, knowing that her position now was that of witness. She knew what lay in the heart of each three-leaf and that what would happen this afternoon would shatter them irrevocably. It made her sad, in a distant, far-off way. She liked quiet C and the almost-silent B and even A, for all that she could taste the passion and desperation that was twisting within him; twisting and turning inward and inward until he was wound so tightly that she could almost feel the humming beat of his heart.

"Desperation comes of fear," she whispered to the bird on her finger, breaking the silence and letting her eyes drift close as she listened to the slow twisting of A's heart. The rapid, frightened beating was faster and faster and... she could almost taste the moment when fear became determination and everything vanished in a blazing rush of something so strong that the birds around her took flight, leaving her alone to drop from the tree in an improbable flutter of white and glitter of metal.

Love and possession tangled strangely in the human heart, she'd discovered, but she'd never truly _understood_ it as she did now, feeling it reflected through A as B's heart stuttered, struggled... and stopped.

"Three into two." She sank to her knees, mouth twisting unhappily as she felt C's own sudden desperation and the sharp twist of fear echoed as he felt his brother die. "To destroy something out of love... will only bring more destruction."

She could hear the running feet, the sudden panic of their keepers as people responded to the sudden, unexpected violence - unexpected only to them. B had known what was to come, as had C and Suu. Perhaps only A had failed to realize what the slowly spiraling jealousy and fear would bring, but it was knowledge that he now embraced fully and Suu could see where the path he had chosen would take all three.

"The three leaf clover..." she looked up at the still-wheeling birds, small face suddenly calm as she found the center of the whirlwind that surrounded her. She had an answer to the lyric question that she'd wanted to ask, but to which she'd never given voice. The answer hadn't eluded her so much as remained silently hidden, waiting for the right moment for discovery.

Revelation was a strange place to someone who was used to hearing the answers to her questions in the soft chatter of her mechanical birds - allowed to listen but never to answer back. The stasis of her existence had changed with the swift, simple violence that had been A's answer to the problem of divided loyalty and a seemingly divided heart.

Suu knew what she wanted now, hearing the haunting voice of the singer that she knew would speak back to her now that she herself was ready. She knew what C would do and what that action would do to A.... Her cage was suddenly claustrophobic, pressing in on her as if, for the first time, she was on the wrong side of the bars.

Knowing the heart of the three-leaf trio had never been like this. She'd never felt the twist of want and _need_ or the stab of desperation that lead A to take the life of one brother for the undivided attention of the other. Darkness lay here and sorrow... and a passion that she'd never touched and never understood for all that she'd heard it's echoes time and time again.

Suu rose into the air herself, rising with the tiny birds and letting their wild pattern smooth into something more natural. She knew the answer now, knew _a_ answer.

"The three leaf clover brings _change_."

   
Please [post a comment](http://yuletidetreasure.org/cgi-bin/comment.cgi?filename=32/knowingthe&filetype=html&title=Knowing%20the%20Heart%20of%20a%20Three%20Leaf) on this story.

Read [posted comments](http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/32/knowingthe_cmt.html).  



End file.
